You Can't Play The Witcher 2 On a Non-NTFS HDD

[Asehujiko]

This is quite a bad thing, actually. A lot of people will probably end up being unable to play the game, without knowing what the problem. And even if they do they will need to go through the trouble of reformatting their hard drive or adding a partition first.

Why the hell would they even need a single 9 GB file? And why don't they just split it up in three parts? In my opinion: this is nothing more than a bug that can easily be fixed.

"a lot" in this case meaning people trying to install the game on an 10 year old HD, are incapable of using forums, contacting the developers or using their own common sense.

And that "trouble" of adding a new partition involves all of 10 clicks following a screenshot tutorial on the same page as your post.

 

[Vonnis]

People still use FAT32? You learn something every day.

 

[uc.asc]

BTW2 to everyone wondering 'FAT32 still exists' or 'anyone still uses FAT32'. Well, do you own a digital camera? USB stick? Mobile phone? Just about everything except personal computers and servers uses FAT32 as a standard. Using NTFS for, say, a USB stick is possible, but you'll kill it much sooner than a FAT-formatted stick.

A bit like ARM processors. They're everywhere, but complaining that the witcher won't run on them would be downright silly.

 

[YawningAngel]

So what? It requires Windows XP, and XP uses NTFS. Everything after XP uses NTFS. This problem can't arise on a non-stupid install of a supported OS.

Windows XP can use both FAT32 and NTFS ( even a few others i believe ). however not all file security and storage options will work or be availabel.

nevertheless, ive never seen a normal ( assuming no dualbooth or specialised equipment and sutch ) with FAT32 since windows NT.

You can theoretically install Windows XP on a FAT16 drive, but doing so begs the question of what the point would be, who would do/has done this, and why CD Projekt should support it.

 

[solidstatemind]

Well it's a bit silly, I see no reason for a 9 GB file instead of three 3 GB or something.

Still, at least it's a built-in game flaw.

Portal 2 requires NTFS solely for its DRM and guess how many articles were written about that?

BTW I've got a few FAT32 partitions for purposes of Linux, but fortunately Linux can read and write NTFS just fine nowadays, even if it's still a completely closed system.

BTW2 to everyone wondering 'FAT32 still exists' or 'anyone still uses FAT32'. Well, do you own a digital camera? USB stick? Mobile phone? Just about everything except personal computers and servers uses FAT32 as a standard. Using NTFS for, say, a USB stick is possible, but you'll kill it much sooner than a FAT-formatted stick.

As a developer, let me assure you that just because you don't see a reason for large, contiguous files doesn't mean that good reasons don't exist. The easiest to explain is, as I said above, HDD read/write times. With desktop computers often shipping with 4GB (or even more) memory these days, it makes sense to keep all that data together. Windows internal defragmenting algorithms only try to lump files together. Directories are not considered. So, the best way to minimize the amount of searching is with big-ass file sizes. It's not a huge optimization, but when you're trying to squeeze every bit of speed out of the game, it counts. (Of course, SSDs render this moot; too bad they're still so expensive.)

Anyway, what I really wanted to touch on here is how so many people are claiming that failure to mention it is some kind of 'oversight' on the part of CD Projekt. News flash:

[HEADING=2]This is not an oversight. By stating that the OS needs to be XP, Vista, or Win7, they are implicitly stating that an NTFS file system is necessary![/HEADING]

Look, I'm sorry that the kid in the original story only has a FAT32 drive, but there is nothing that says that CD Projekt is compelled to support outdated technology. Maybe he should move some other files that are compatible with FAT32 to that drive and make room on his NTFS drives for the game?

Or here's another idea: he can get a new SATA III half-Terrabyte drive for less than he paid for the game and put it on there.

Seriously, this is one of the silliest 'issues' ever discussed on the Escapist.

 

[Deathfish15]

Ah PC gaming. I would buy this game for PS3 though.

Really? And the PS3 is so much better? How many old PS3 games thrive without an ounce of mod support? I'm sure the answer is 0. Didn't that system JUST get Valve's Steam support with Portal 2's launch?

PC is were games are born, consoles are were their offspring crawl.

Take Minecraft as a key example. It's a million dollar extraordinary, anomaly sandbox game. It has it's own, HUGE community, tons of modding support, great gameplay, and has spread into a massive Je ne sais quel.

On the Xbox360, there's a game that's similar to it called FortressCraft. It's clear where the first idea came from and where the better one spread. Oh, and let's not forget that Minecraft is a top selling game that hasn't even released yet!

Now, that's not to say that the first Witcher hasn't had a few kinks into it (which makes me skeptical of this game). But, overall the game has some pretty good heart and soul into it, which many of the AAA games that have been dribbled over the past few years seriously lack!

 

[Vrach]

When are companies going to stop trying to screw people over? List these damn things.

It's not a lie, just an oversight. It's a file system issue, not a game one, very few people still use FAT32 nowadays. If you ever tried to burn a DVD image to your hard drive, you'd have run into this problem long ago cause FAT32 doesn't support single files that are bigger than 4 GBs. I imagine Witcher's just the first game to use a single file that big or something if it's the first time this has happened.

Also, it's not really a requirement. I mean it is but... if you failed to list a video card requirement, people would have to buy a new video card if their current one couldn't run the game. That's a requirement imo. This just requires you to get a single partition formatted as NTFS, you don't have to buy anything for it. At best it's an issue if you've only got a single partition (which is stupid to do in the first place), even then you can get some free program to just create a new partition for you without even having to format the old one. And really, anyone who's gaming and has a system to support playing Witcher 2 should be on NTFS by now - personally, to those people, I'd consider this "issue" to be a public service announcement on switching to a newer file system

It's not an oversight, not everyone apparently has gotten over this if it makes the news like this. It's the same thing that happened with me and Black Ops, Dual core Supported in the requirements, except it took 6 months for me to be able to play it because, well of my dual core processor and their lack of testing and willing to admit their product doesn't support something.

I get it that it's obsolete but it should at least say this. A small note would have cleared all of this up. It'd suck if someone had got the game and got screwed by this slight oversight.

When are companies going to stop trying to screw people over? List these damn things.

This is... screwing people over? Aren't you being a little dramatic? It was simply an over-sight.

Who's being dramatic? Have you ever bought a game and because of an 'oversight' you're stuck with a drink coaster for 6 months? Hell I have a few games that don't work on my pc because of 'oversights' which is me wasting money that a multimillion dollar company doesn't care about.

Yeah... except you're not screwed over. The game does work. It does work on your computer. All you need to do for it to work is format one partition so that it has the NTFS file system. You don't have to wait for a fix. You don't have to buy anything new. You don't need to pay for a technician to do anything for you. You just have to grab a partition with some space on it, split it in two and make one of the two new partitions use the NTFS file system. There's plenty of guides on how to do it on the internet if you've never done it before and even a child can follow those directions, it's not even remotely complicated.

And there's not a single reason why a person owning a computer capable of playing this game in the year 2011, should not have a single drive with space on it that's formatted as NTFS.

 

[Snotnarok]

Yeah... except you're not screwed over. The game does work. It does work on your computer. All you need to do for it to work is format one partition so that it has the NTFS file system. You don't have to wait for a fix. You don't have to buy anything new. You don't need to pay for a technician to do anything for you. You just have to grab a partition with some space on it, split it in two and make one of the two new partitions use the NTFS file system. There's plenty of guides on how to do it on the internet if you've never done it before and even a child can follow those directions, it's not even remotely complicated.

And there's not a single reason why a person owning a computer capable of playing this game in the year 2011, should not have a single drive with space on it that's formatted as NTFS.

Okay, ya didn't read my post, I was referring to black ops claiming to support dual core processors, and for the first 6 months that wasn't the case and I had a 60 dollar drink coaster. And yes, I was screwed over for 6 months waiting for them to patch the game that said, on the box, was compatible with my pc, because it wasn't.

I'm SIMPLY STATING that companies should put these things on the box, despite how simple the thing is should be posted it to give the customer more info. I fix computers for people who do not know anything about them, and get most of their info off the box and not this weird thing called the internet, there's a lot of things I wish were printed on boxes such as DRM and things like steam is required to be installed because it does confuse people despite what you think and I get questions on this crap constantly.

I've already been asked if the Witcher will run on my friends computer because he doesn't know what a "FAT requires"

 

[fierydemise]

I've already been asked if the Witcher will run on my friends computer because he doesn't know what a "FAT requires"

That is exactly why they aren't putting it on the box because it creates confusion for what is effectively a non-issue. As noted above if you have a computer with XP, Vista or 7 on it (the OS requirements) then you are almost certainly already using NTFS because its been the default option. If CDPR put requires NTFS in the system reqs you'd see a lot of very confused people asking whether or not their machine will work (or worse yet declining to purchase out of fear) and a lot of really unneeded customer confusion for a system that effects a small enough to be non-existent subset of people.

 

[koroem]

This just in, gamer using computer from 1996 attempts to run game released in 2011. More at 11.

 

[Snotnarok]

I've already been asked if the Witcher will run on my friends computer because he doesn't know what a "FAT requires"

That is exactly why they aren't putting it on the box because it creates confusion for what is effectively a non-issue. As noted above if you have a computer with XP, Vista or 7 on it (the OS requirements) then you are almost certainly already using NTFS because its been the default option. If CDPR put requires NTFS in the system reqs you'd see a lot of very confused people asking whether or not their machine will work (or worse yet declining to purchase out of fear) and a lot of really unneeded customer confusion for a system that effects a small enough to be non-existent subset of people.

You know what? Fair enough this is a great argument against what I said. Sometimes it's better for people to not be told about things to make things easier on the rest of us.

At least you understand what I was saying.

 

[Project_Xii]

Really? Really?

Good grief, people will rage over anything nowadays. All I can say to the people who go "I'm cancelling my pre-order" after every overly negative, over blown article is "good". If you're dumb enough to believe in all this media rage mongering, you don't deserve to play good games.

 

[Necrofudge]

Weird that this is an issue. I didn't know that people even use fat32 anymore. If this is a problem for someone, then they probably haven't upgraded their computer in a long while and likely couldn't run the game anyway.

 

[Sevarrius]

Does anyone other than the two to five people in the world this is going to catch off guard actually care about this?

 

[snfonseka]

This is not a requirement. It's god damn common sense.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Eh. I have a lot of FAT32 partitions, and ran into this problem with a backup file once.

But to everyone asking why you'd have FAT32, you obviously have never used multiple operating systems at once.

For quite a long period, NTFS was practically unreadable outside of windows, meaning the only thing you'd store on an NTFS drive if you had any common sense, would be stuff you knew with 100% certainty you would never need to access outside of windows.

And considering the utility I've found in having a way to read stuff if windows gets totally messed up, that's not a lot of things.

Still, I have NTFS partitions on most computers too, so... eh.

A better question is why any developer would think using 9GB data files is a good idea. There's no way that file is anything but an archive of smaller bits of data, and there's no good reason why it shouldn't be broken up. If only for performance reasons, if nothing else.

I would agree that a 9GB file is a really bad idea, especially if you aren't using file mapping, but to be honest, a game developer that doesn't stick files into some kind of archive is going to end up with a game with huge loading times.

The hard drive is, after all, one of the slowest components in a PC.
Although, for it to be truly effective at increasing loading times, you want to merge files together into a single archive if they routinely get loaded at the same time.
Otherwise it won't help much.
That means the upper limit of any one file should probably be approximately equal to the content that goes into a single level.
That way, you can load the whole archive into memory in one continuous disk access, rather than as lots of scattered files potentially located all over the disk.
If you've got spare CPU cycles, compressing the data would be even better.

But, 9GB of data seems far too much for that logic to hold up. Especially given the fact that even now, computers with enough RAM for something like that to be in any way useful are incredibly rare. (And essentially non-existent in practical terms if the game isn't designed for 64 bit operations.)
In fact, if a game runs in a 32 bit environment, a file exceeding 2GB in size is totally counter-productive.

Then again, I figure you probably know a lot of this anyway, what with being the IT director for the Escapist...
(Or not. It never pays to assume what any given person does or does not know about...)

 

[antipunt]

This is just kind of silly...

I'm not necessarily a pc expert, but even I know FAT-32 is prehistoric ol'news. Not even joking/exaggerating here.